Hassan II of Morocco

Born in Rabat in 1929, Hassan was groomed for power from childhood: traditional Islamic schooling, legal studies in Bordeaux, then exile and independence negotiations beside his father, Mohammed V. He took the throne in 1961 inheriting a fractured state - foreign-held territory, scattered military, party-run police - and moved fast to centralize. A constitution in 1962 gave Morocco multi-party trappings but kept real power in the palace. Unrest came quickly: border war with Algeria in 1963, mass protests in Casablanca in 1965, then years of rule by decree. In 1971 and 1972, his own military tried twice to kill him; both times he walked away and tightened his grip. The Green March of 1975 sent hundreds of thousands on foot into Spanish Sahara, securing Moroccan control and igniting a conflict that never ended. He held the West close, kept the economy moving, and ran what became known as the Years of Lead - a period of disappearances and repression that an official commission would later catalog. He died in Rabat in July 1999, and his son Mohammed VI opened the accounting.